Amazing Feedback on Wooting one from PC Master Race and others!

In these last couple of days, the r/PC Master Race (PCMR) community has shown us an incredible amount of support and feedback. It’s given us an incredible amount of motivation, willpower and insight that we’ll be needing in what’s to come.

We’ve spent over 8 hours straight answering people in the PCMR Ask Me Anything (AMA) with nothing less than pleasure. Afterward, we’ve continued answering questions from everybody on Twitter, Facebook, DM’s and Email. We want to give special thanks to everybody that participating in the PCMR AMA and everybody else that’s connected with us for feedback and support.

We’ve taken everything into consideration, at this moment it’s too early to draw any major conclusions but you’ve already majorly influenced our coming action plans.

We mention it to others often; We can only come up with so many ideas while an entire community can come up with millions.

The overwhelming amount of support has resulted in some tech websites to feature us, such as Slashgear, Gizmodo and from our own country Tweakers.net and Hardware.info. We’ve also been contacted by a handful reviewers that can’t wait to get their hands on the Wooting one. All good-good.

Since we are quite serious about what we claim to do, we went through literally all the input that we’ve received and want to share some of the highlights. We’ve also made a handy FAQ.

Some concerns

“The idea is cool, but what is stopping someone like Razer from stealing your idea and releasing their own keyboard with analog keys”

“I play Arma 3 a lot. I NEED the numpad keys. Else I can’t play that game. So that is an important reason for me :)”

“Will we be able to disassemble it? So that we can paint it.”

Some cool ideas

“Why not release a separate num-pad that fits with the Wooting one”

“(…) I’d also be very interested in seeing a tactile style switch with an analog input, something like an MX brown with 3 different bumps the more you push it down would be amazing.”

“Hey, just wanted to suggest using USB type C for the cable. It’s just so much more comfortable,”

Some mind-bending

“I use a digital product that simulates analogue input to interface with a digital device to simulate an analogue world for me to experience, whom resides in an analogue world?”

Some love and support

“(…) Just wanted to say it’s really awesome to see you guys so willing to answer everyone’s inquiries with such enthusiasm and detail. Thanks so much!!!”

“As someone with similar ideals with regards to entrepreneurship, please succeed so I can use you as an example against naysayers.”

“please become a standard please become a standard please become a standard please become a standard”

Some difficult questions

“What’s the noise level, in AtoD counts, on the key input?”

“Ass or tits”

Some negativity

“I bet this gets annoying real fast. Constantly having to precisely press the right amount of pressure will probably be horrible for your fingers”

“This is the most retarded idea anyone has ever come up with”

“Even my poor man’s Logitech K120 has a numpad”

Some trolls

” ‘No more jerky movements while following NPCs!’ Proceeds to walk just as jerky as before.”

“Why is the name so stupid? Wooting one?!”

“Razer makes one tomorrow and charges £150 for it with shitty build quality”

What’s next?

When we decided to announce the analog feature in our keyboard, we hadn’t thought it would get picked up so fast, but it did, and that’s rather a good thing than a bad because we want to accelerate our entire development process in both hardware as software.

That’s why we need your help by supporting us. We have found a couple of great investors who made it possible for us to get started and capable of producing a basic model but it’s not at the point where we want it to be and in longer terms, everything together is a lot more costly.

If we only release the Wooting one without further support and development, then it will be written in history as a gimmick and remembered as an “oh they tried, but this is not viable”.

I’m sure you agree, we don’t want that to happen.

To make this a real success, we need to fight towards making analog input in a keyboard an industry standard. The only way we can achieve that is by creating an open platform that can fully utilize the analog keyboard input and allow modders, developers and anybody with a playful mind to create new applications and support for existing applications/games.

That’s why we’re planning to raise additional funds through crowdfunding to accelerate the entire process. This will not only help accelerate everything by hiring additional help, it will also allow us to create other variations of the keyboard, improve the technology, decrease the cost and support multiple languages.

Keep the feedback coming

When we just started this project, we told ourselves that we should always seek out for feedback, stay true to ourselves and everybody around us. That’s why our communication channels are always open for everybody and when we get the chance, we answer as many people as we can.

So, don’t feel like you missed out and share your opinion, concerns, thoughts, ideas, questions, critical thinking or anything that pops into your mind with us by:

8 Comments

Keyboard is remarkably similar to my Cougar 700K in appearance. I generally refer to my keyboard as the filth magnet any spec of dust, any crumb any hair within a 5 meter radius is found lodged behind the keys, you might want to look into that. Just saying…..

We know exactly what you mean. I just finished cleaning one of my keyboards and it was full of (c). I can’t say this is avoidable, even though it has floating keycaps, it will still strangle around the switch stems.

Maybe the question then becomes, how can we make the cleaning process easier, faster or better.

I love the concept of this keyboard. As someone who likes playing with a G13/Nostromo N52 style keyboard, I would like to know the likelyhood of a follow up product to compete with those products. It would be quite easy to be the top quality product in that segment since it has no quality products now.

Hi Josh, I have to give you a lame answer. Maybe, in the future. It would be cool to expend our products and try to compete with every device there is. I have a question for you, why would you prefer a G13/Nostromo N52 over a keyboard?

Well, Erik…
a keypad is way better in terms of:
ergonomics, speed, control over actions and commands.
It is just made for gaming, keyboards are great for typing but sadly suck at comfort and functionality in a game that requires many buttons.

I hope you could make money by selling the switches in quantities of let’s say 20, and provide instructions on how to handwire it with a Teensy. The MK market is so satisfied in the lower / mid tier, that it’s maybe better to target those enthusiasts that spend a lot more money on building their own or getting custom high end boards built. Instead of racing the giant companies! As of now we mostly buy from Korea, so maybe there is market potential. Some good sources to talk to is Jack Humbert from OLKB and Zeal from ZealPC.

We’ve been active on the mechanical keyboard community for a while, have to thank you and the others again for giving insightful input during the design phase. I know what you’re talking about, but I’m not sure yet how we’re going to make it possible until we’ve grown as a company first and gained some more experience how we can handle this logistically and production wise first. So, to what extend the keyboard customization goes, we are big fans of it but, for now, we’re trying to keep it quite basic as possible so that you don’t need to be an expert to do something. Once we have a steady thing going, we’re able to expand our, product offering (methods).

I don’t want to mention other companies here, but there is one that is focused on this market, it’s just the question why they don’t give it a shot.

Even though we are racing against quite some quite big and experienced companies, we have a lot of confidence that with continued support from the community, we’re able to have a good chance.